7 Surprising Things That Could Make You A Sex Offender

We recently reported on a
10-year-old child who's required to register as a sex
offender for abusing younger boys on an Arizona Army base.

It's hard to imagine that a sex offender registry — a
public database run by states — would include anybody
who wasn't an adult pedophile or a rapist or seriously dangerous
in some way. But sex offender registries can ensnare and publicly
humiliate people who haven't victimized anybody at
all.

Here are some of the more surprising ways you can end up on
a sex offender registry:

1) Taking naked photos of
yourself — if you're a minor.
Teenagers who take nude photographs of themselves could get
charged with child pornography and be put on sex registries,
according to a 2013
report from Human Rights Watch. Kids who send
naked photos that are viewed in another state could be charged
with a federal crime, personal injury lawyer Linda
Jane Chalat has written.

A 15-year-old girl in Pennsylvania was charged in 2004 with
spreading child porn after taking nude photos of herself and
putting them online, according to Human Rights Watch. She was
still on the sex offender registry as of 2012.

3) Peeing in public. At least 13 states require
sex offender registration for public urination, according to
Human Rights Watch's comprehensive review of
sex offender laws in 2007. Two of those states specify that
the urination must happen in front of a minor.

4) Flashing your breasts. You can get arrested
for indecent exposure in California if you flash your
breasts in front of a lot of people in order to gratify
yourself or offend somebody else, according to the Shouse Law
Group, a group of California criminal defense lawyers. And
indecent exposure can land you on the sex offender registry.

5) Having consensual sex with a teenager, even if you're
a teenager, too. At least 29 states require teenagers
who have had consensual sex with each other to register as sex
offenders, according to the Human Rights Watch
Report from 2007. In Georgia, a woman named Wendy
Whitaker was on the sex offender registry for years for
having sex with a classmate when she was 17 and he was 15.

6) Sleeping with your sister. Incest is not just
a social taboo; it's also
illegal in a lot of states. Football player Tony
Washingtonlearned that
lesson the hard way after getting in trouble for having sex with
his 15-year-old sister when he was 16. "I didn't know it was
illegal," Washington told ESPN in
2010.

7) Giving another child a hug. There's been
momentum recently to get rid of requirements that children
register as sex offenders, the
Wall Street Journal reported. Five residents of Colorado who
were found delinquent for sex crimes as kids recently sued the
state to fight a law that forced them to register as sex
offenders, according to the Journal.

One of those Colorado residents had been accused of trying to hug
a girl at his elementary school too much when he was 13.